A Modern Day Persuasion by Kaitlin Saunders

Do yourself a favour Janeites, re-read Jane Austen’s Persuasion instead of A Modern Day Persuasion, An Adaptation of Jane Austen’s Classic by Kaitlin Saunders.

This book needed a good, hard edit. Some famous writer or other (Elmore Leonard, to be precise) said that the trick to telling a good story is to leave out the boring bits, and someone should have told this author. There is far too much guff about what kind of tea minor characters drink, and lunches with celebrity cousins who aren’t interesting. Boring stuff that doesn’t move the story along doesn’t belong in the final cut.

To make matters worse, the grammar and punctuation are poor. I’m not an expert, far from it, but these sort of faults are annoying.

The author is also guilty of telling rather than showing the action.

As I said earlier, a reader will get far more pleasure from reading or re-reading Persuasion. However, if you really want to know what happens, seventeen year old Anne Elliot falls in love with twenty year old Rick Wentworth, a poor lifesaver. Too young to get married, they are parted by Anne’s family and godmother, who believe she can do better than Rick.

Years later, Rick returns to the area as a rich and successful novelist. Anne must have been living under a rock, because she had no idea what Rick had been up to during their time apart. (Seriously? You expect me to believe that?In this day and age, if you were still in love with an old flame, wouldn’t you Google them once in a while? I would. Also, Rick is a bestselling writer. Jane Austen heroines read. I found Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to be more believable).

Blah, blah, blah. Anne’s car breaks down, blah, blah, Anne’s nephew fell out of a tree, blah, blah, Anne has a haircut and makeover, blah, blah, enter Will Elliott, blah, blah, Rick thinks Anne is in love with Will, blah, blah, blah, fireworks, happily ever after. The reader probably fell asleep hours ago.

This book has cured me for the moment of Jane Austen tribute novels.